Romani Women in Canada: Spectrum of the Blue Water is grounded upon Romani women’s lived experience as writers, essayists, visual artists, and activists. Reflecting the panoply of women’s voices, the book links everyday experience and a social critique of the factors that enable and constrain women’s lives. Through incisive creativity, pragmatic action, and affective networks, the book is a consolidation of diverse expressions of agency and collectivity. Sharing a will to advance the dignity of women’s lives, the contributors are as plural as their subject matter. Canadian Romani women are impressively diverse in their attachments, status, beliefs, and identities. The chapters in this book illustrate this multiplicity by traversing creative practices and writing motifs. Contributors are visual artists, fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, scholars, and essayists. Reflecting the breadth of contributors’ creative genres, the book is eclectic in content with multiple forms of writing and images. Photographs of visual art and black-and-white portraits of Canadian Romani women will complement the written textual components.

Hedina Tahirović-Sijerčić is the author of six children’s books, several collections of poetry and many other books including the autobiographical novella Rom Like Thunder,and Romani čhib: An Overview of the Romani Language and Culture. She is also the co-editor—with Cynthia Levine-Rasky—and a contributing author of A Romani Women’s Anthology: Spectrum of the Blue Water.

Hedina Tahirović-Sijerčić's profile page

Cynthia Levine-Rasky is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University. She is the co-author of Spectrum of the Blue Water: Romani Women in Canada (2016, Inanna Publications). She lives in Toronto.

Cynthia Levine-Rasky's profile page